PS3 Review: Starhawk

Creating your own bases and changing the combat landscape is a great idea

My experience with Starhawk began with an intoxicating jet-bike ride through the space cowboy desert wasteland of a fringe world and ended with me hanging out in an online lobby and sharing complaints with Don Parsons, our head of PR.

The brilliant Firefly-esque slide guitar melody of that bike ride hit the pleasure centres of my brain alongside the garbled whine of the engine. Moments later, I lept off the bike and sent a bunker crashing down from orbit to fend off mutated humans. The next level of Starhawk’s single player had me piloting the walking robot-mech form of a Hawk, the game’s fighter jet, before a press of a button had me transforming into jet fighter mode and blasting off into an aerial space dogfight. The entire single player campaign was just as well put together and was full of these moments where everything felt right, despite the tame and predictable brother vs. evil brother plot. Unfortunately, the rest of the game falls apart.

Starhawk is developer Lightbox’s next step in the land and air multiplayer third person shooter concept that began as Warhawk, a game developed by several Lightbox employees back when they were a part of developer Incognito.

The intuitive flight controls make the most complex dogfights exhilarating and approachable

Don’t worry if that obligatory history lesson doesn’t sound familiar to you, as the single player component of Starhawk brings you up to speed well before the end of its conclusion. You’ll be introduced to the shooting right before you’re thrown into several situations where you have to use in game currency, called rift energy, to call down buildings from space and watch as they construct real-time in a matter of seconds. This leads to countless situations where you have to defend a point from an increasingly varied mix of infantry, ground vehicles, and fighter aircraft. By the end of the game, you’ll be manning the parapets of turret toting walls to gun down infantry right before you salvage them in a button’s press to jump into the seat of anti air turrets after they burn through the atmosphere – it’s an experience more exhilarating than many I’ve had and it makes for a crushing tragedy that this formula collapses in the realities of online multiplayer.

In the over 14 hours of time that I spent playing Starhawk online, the game modes of team deathmatch, capture the flag, and zones (a variation of capture-and-hold gametypes) devolved into some of the most unenjoyable multiplayer I’ve played in years. This is because of players exploiting the build and battle system as well as the incredible power of tanks and hawks. At the beginning of these game types, several players usually stay behind in the home base gathering rift energy automatically while their teammates run out and skirmish with those of a similar mind on the other side of the conflict. Within minutes, the players that stay behind gain access to the structures that construct hawks and tanks. Because players spawning into the game immediately have enough money to create a tank at one of these buildings, this leads to one side having an incredibly large swell of powerful vehicles and quickly overpowering the opposing side. Well before the end of the match, one side inevitably ends up bombing, shelling, and obliterating the other force’s last remaining area.

Spawn camping never ends up being this fun for either side

It’s almost impossible to combat this behaviour, too, as the defensive structures necessary to do so have a prohibitively high cost and even the readily available rocket launchers do little against vehicles that can kill several infantry players with a single shot.

In all of my time with the above modes of Starhawk’s online play, I only partook in a match that wasn’t a landslide loss or victory once, when a stale mate ended in several well fought skirmishes and changed the course of the match. Sure, it was still due to the overwhelming force of tanks and turrets occupying the one contested and vital area only accessible by air, but it was something.

The most fun to be had with Starhawk is arguably with the online deathmatch mode, which puts all players in hawk jet fighters and throws them into a massive dogfight. Even when you spawn into one of these games after connecting, you can already see spiralling contrails of exhaust behind countless players as they swirl around each other in banks and swooping loops to avoid laser and gunfire. It’s not all that hard to learn, either, as missiles are easily avoidable by holding the X button and using the thumbstick to swoop away in a lilting barrel roll or loop-de-loop. Adding to the depth is the ability brought over from Warhawk to drift, similiar to a car in a street race, in mid-air.

The brilliant air combat and the conceptual appeal of calling down structures from orbit all seem like they’d go incredibly well together, and the talent behind Warhawk’s development has such promise. It makes it one of my biggest disappointments of recent years, then, to say that Starhawk isn’t recommendable on anything other than the merits of its online dogfighting and single player components.

“I hope they patch it,” was said by many of the players I met online, even the ones who were winning. The hope for a patch is mirrored by my own thoughts, but it’s hardly something to recommend a game on.

Pros:

Fantastic soundtrack

Intoxicating space cowboy atmosphere

Solid framerate and good online connectivity

The best arcade flight gameplay in years makes online dogfights in Death Match mode fantastic arenas for fun and skill

Fantastic visuals, sound effects, and animations

Good single player campaign

“Build and battle” system is a lot of fun…

Cons:

…but it makes for some of the most exploitable, unbalanced, and unenjoyable online multiplayer I’ve played

Co-op has an unrealistically steep difficulty curve

Party system is confusing and rarely works

Online split-screen often results in disconnects

Many elements, such as loadouts, medals, and online character progression, are left unexplained

It all started with a 30+ page FAQ on Mechassault back on his high-school lunch breaks. Since then, Kyle has graduated from the award winning journalism program at Humber College and has written for and managed several game editorial/news publications.

Chris Scott

That’s a shame. Warhawk is one of the only multiplayer shooters on my PS3 I actually enjoyed. I was hoping Starhawk would pretty much just be a slight evolution of Warhawk with a campaign component to hook other players in.

arbitor365

clearly a review written by someone who sucks at the game.

“devolved into some of the most unenjoyable multiplayer I’ve played in years. This is because of players exploiting the build and battle system as well as the incredible power of tanks and hawks.”

most matches dont even allow tanks (thanks to the custom lobbies). and hawks are far from invincible. every element is balanced out by other elements, it is simply about having the aptitude to use them and to plan ahead.

also, “exploiting the build and battle system?” the “build and battle” system is the entire game. Starhawk is a strategy game before its an action game. if you weren’t “exploiting the build and battle” system, than you were doing it wrong.

this is the most petulant, pathetically ill-informative review I have seen of the game. People, don’t listen to this guy. Starhawk is not unbalanced. there are countless ways to play the game and as long as you have skill and tactical aptitude, you will do fine.

Chronic_everlasting

It is better than warhawk in many ways. The author just wasn’t good enough in the game that he gave it a 2 out of 5. It’s not unbalanced, like he said.

Chronic_everlasting

I agree in every kinda way!!!

Axe99

Two grenades will kill a Hawk, or two rockets from a launcher, and three rockets will take out a tank. They’re far from invincible. Shame you weren’t able to cope with the online, but this is one of the best online experiences available if you’re up to the task. Particularly as the lobby system lets you know the ‘threat level’ of a server (how skilled people in it are), set up whatever server you want, and if the pub games are too much, set up a pw-protected server to learn the ropes with mates.

This’d be like someone getting pwned in CoD, and giving it a 2/5 from spite.

http://twitter.com/BaronKyle Kyle Baron

That’s fair to assume, though I frequently was at the top of my team. I never found myself doing poorly in terms of points earned, kill/death, etc. The problem, for me, is that the mid to late game of Starhawk was hampered not by the core ideas and mechanics, but by the frequent exploits on the part of the players.

It’s not a problem of “argh, campers,” but one of spawn camping being all too encouragable (in a way, necessary because of you needing to capture all points in, say, Zones) and difficult to counter. Shields are a bit expensive, and rightly so, but tanks and ground-borne hawks can counter rockets all too easily at any but the closest of distances.

It’s not an issue of “Starhawk is awful,” but one of the game being hard to recommend and hard to enjoy on anything other than the strong single player and seldom enjoyable multiplayer experience

Chris Scott

I’m not a fan of exploiting spawn camping on either side and from what it seems, even from those that support the game, is that Starhwak encourages it to be successful. I don’t have time for that type of game when there are so many other games that attempt to discourage it.

great review. i have loged in about 40hrs on StarHawk and i think im done. This game is nowhere as entertaining as WarHawk and will soon be back on the shelves for trade.
Unfortunitly my disapointment is in the minorty which means my fantasy of a WarHawk2 with updated maps and tech, just doesnt seem likely.